Between Sleep and Awake
by MilkMamaReturns
Summary: A bizarre series of flashbacks brings Brennan back to the week before, reliving what could be fantasy or reality. What is truly tangible when you are between sleep and awake? WARNING: Includes graphic descriptions, sex, language, etc. RATING CHANGED TO M.
1. A Step Away From Reality

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part I: A Step Away From Reality**

My eye had swollen shut. I could feel my blood thudding through the wound like a drummer at a rock concert.

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD.

How did I get here?

Scanning the room, I could see very little. Glimmers of light, revealing the presence of a small window not six feet above my head.

Duct tape.

It covered the aperture. Slits between the opaque gray strips gave way to a dull glow. It did not fill the room. I wish it had. Fear and anxiety quickened my thoughts, sped my pulse up, tormented my imagination.

CLICK!

What was that sound? My chest tightened.

A stale bust of air came up beside my head. I could feel my hair lifting into the air like little soldiers standing at attention, searching for any signs of life. My cheek lay on the cold concrete surface. The coolness felt good on my face. Within seconds, however, I could feel my face warming from the forced air heat and the THUD-THUD-THUD growing louder in my achy head.

I tried desperately to adjust my one good eye to the darkness. I cursed my circumstances. I cursed the fact that I had once again found myself in a situation where I was weak and helpless.

Blindly, my fingers examined the wound on my face. The stinging sensation let me know the approximate shape and size of the abrasion.

Abrasion. Ha. That's litotes if I'd ever heard it.

The gap was at least 3/4 of an inch wide. The length extended from my maxilla to my eyebrow. No wonder I couldn't see anything.

Had I suffered a concussion?

There are seventeen cranial sutures. Each placed under one of three categories. I named and spelled each, placing each in their relative category and sighed with relief when I came to the final letter.

Recitation had its benefits. At least I knew I had my wits about me. That much I could do. An eyesight check would be useless in the dark.

Dizzy? Yes.

Blind? Possibly.

Senseless? Not completely.

I moved to stand, but quickly found my leg was glued in place. My fingers hiked to the hem of my blue jeans. Cold. Hard. Metal, most likely. Attached to a metal chain.

My finger tips traveled the steel road to the base of the concrete wall. Chained like an animal. Like a bear in a trap.

Laying on the cold concrete like a damp rag doll, my mind found its way back to cases we'd worked together. Kidnapping cases, particularly one. A woman. A young woman. Bound, beaten, laying on her side for days on rough concrete, her side being eaten away by disease and infection.

I didn't like the images that found their way into my brain. I shivered at the memory. No, I hadn't actually been there with the woman, but I knew how she felt. The pain in her side. I felt my own hip joint aching. Her shoulder hurt. Mine ached, too.

I quickly retrained my thoughts, but despite my best efforts, they wound their way back to Booth. Back to death and murder. Back to the case we were working only yesterday. Six women, at various stages of decomposition. Kidnapped. Ransomed. Murdered.

I wondered if I would end up at the dump site just like the rest of them.

I rolled into a supine position, the back of my head laying on the concrete, my eye exploring the ceiling. Looking at the duct tape, I imagined that the glowing shapes created from the gaps in the duct tape were stars. Some were triangular. Some were octagonal. Some were rectangular. Most were random quadrilaterals.

For what seemed like hours, I drifted in and out of consciousness. My mind never focused on escape. It never begged for freedom. I almost seemed at ease in my enclosure.

Boredom set in. I took that as a good sign. Not many people in captivity would find themselves bored. Even the self deprecating sense of angst had left me. How had it left me, I mused? The door was locked. The one little window above me was closed. Through the ventilation shaft, I reasoned. Perhaps my fear hadn't grown to such a ridiculous size that it couldn't fit through that three by six opening? Another good sign, I smirked.

I watched the window. What was it? At least 12 by 24. Could I fit my hips through that hole? My head? My bust? Probably.

Another good sign. I chuckled. Oh, G-d, I was losing it. At least with insanity, one can leave their fears behind. The stars disappeared behind a hazy black cloud.

I woke up again.

My eye socket continued its rhythmic pounding. I realized I hadn't heard a thing in hours. The lack of sunlight, moonlight, the works, made it difficult to tell how much time had passed. I guessed five hours.

As I calculated how much time had passed, the world grew dark once again.

Thirst. An overwhelming feeling of thirst. My mouth felt like the Gobe Desert. Minus the sand. My tongue ran over my teeth. Plus the plaque. Why can't a girl get a good toothbrush and toothpaste when she's being held captive? Whoever these people are, they certainly weren't going to be the next Hilton. I couldn't help but to wonder if my partner would have found my joke amusing.

THUD-THUD-THUD-THUD

I could almost picture that look of concern in his eyes as he inspected my wounded cheek and eye. He could really be nurturing sometimes. It could be endearing. It could also be infuriating. I preferred to think of it as endearing, as long as he didn't know about it.

As I drifted into a restless sleep state, terrible, wonderful dreams plagued me. Dreams of macaroni dinners, diner moments, apprentices, incomplete skeletons, silver screws, stolen glances, memories of my mother.

My stomach began twisting in my abdomen, rearing back and wrenching its jaws into its side. When was the last time I'd eaten? I couldn't remember. Well, in all honesty, I simply did not know. Time and darkness played tricks on me. The irony. Was it time for dinner, lunch, or breakfast? I guessed breakfast. My stomach protested, so I turned my thoughts to other things.

I remembered sitting at that table. His chestnut eyes staring back at me. I'd looked back in them several times before. Brown, people said. His license even said it. They were not brown. Brown, specks of green, flecks of gold. Brown was a gross understatement. That was like saying a prism is clear. Prisms are NOT clear. Pinks, blues, reds, oranges, yellows, greens sparkle from its hearth.

My imagination was playing games with my mind once again. Running away like a hyena with its catch.

Concentrate!

My fingers traced the chain, piecing together a picture in my mind's eye. The shape of a keyhole. Fat at the base, narrow at the top like hallow lollipop. I jerked at the lock.

CLICK! THUD-THUD-THUD... CLINK!

I imagined the world turning their heads in my direction. Could the mystery perpetrator be listening in? Taking notes? Plotting my demise? I pulled harder.

Digging my grave? I put my back into it.

Gathering together lime and plastic trash bags? I strained my whole body.

CLINK! Nothing. CLINK! Was it useless?

I stopped. My chest heaving as my diaphragm pulled the musty air into my lungs.

With my head feeling heavy once again, like a sandbags piling up, creating a barrier against a torrential flood, I began to feel faint. Was I feverish? I could feel the heat rising from my collar as if someone had poured hot asphalt down my blouse. Drops of hot tar must have splattered my cheek, because the throbbing was becoming unbearable. My eyelids felt weighed down and finally pushed out what little light I could see.

* * *

The memories came quickly. Ephemeral. Like silvery snow flakes tumbling from hot breath. Sweet, fast, slow.

I walked through the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building. I heard my heals clicking lightly on the tile floor. I saw his office coming into focus. I saw myself walking at the same time that I could see the office grow larger in my sight.

Two familiar faces. One belonging to my partner. The other belonging to a man whose name was fleeting. I had the feeling that we had met before.

He smiled and at first I felt distrustful, but my partner's warm eyes calmed my nerves.

I blinked.

Consciousness was as easy to catch as a feather in the wind. I blinked hard. Harder.

How had I gotten here in the first place? My memories were dull and ethereal at first. Twisting and turning in the room like I was watching Fantasia at twelve years old again. The dullness quickly drifted away as my eyelids grew thicker. One with exhaustion. The other with pus and other things I didn't care to think about. I tried to force myself to stay conscious, but my body refused and I found myself reliving Sunday all over again.

I tumbled. Falling over leaves and broken boughs, finally landing in a pit of decaying cadavers. The stench. Hot. Sweet. Stomach-curdling.

His lips touched mine and I only wanted him closer.

Cold porcelain against my cheek.

500 count Egyptian cotton sheets that weren't mine.

Corpses on bitterly cold stainless steel.

A knife. Rough bricks. Penetrating ice-cold lake water.

Tide with Bleach. Bleach has such an indefinable odor. So pungent, always clinging, claiming its presence long after the water had been rinsed away. Resplendent sunshine trickled through the curtains and on the inside of my eyelids, although I refused to open them at first, the bright red color of my own blood coursing through them shook me into a more wakeful mood.

Monday. What is it about Mondays that always keep us from wanting to begin our week? The only limb I allowed movement was my arm with which I tossed the blanket aside, effectively disturbing my perfect cocoon of warmth.

I lowered my feet onto blood-red carpet. Or was it really blood? Hot and oozing between my toes. Coagulating like cottage cheese, seeping like blood can only do.

The shower washed my thoughts away. The faucet was turned up high, just a shade under scorching. A few degrees away from stripping my flesh and rinsing it away down the drain.

Adrenaline still coursed through my veins, causing my hands to shake uncontrollably. Nightmares were never uncommon for me. Thoughts of death, blood, and more recently, evil in the form of the malignant and villainous human being always danced around in my subconscious, causing my mind to wander to places I wish I could only escape from. There was my escape. In the white-hot liquid rippling over my nude body, pouring away my fear, my anxiety, my truth.

I closed my eyes, soaking in the baptismal. How ironic that baptisms are meant to wash away sins, but this particular ritual bathed away my demons.

A flash of light. Voices whispering. I quickly opened them once again and shut off the water, running from the room in which my succubus had remanifested itself.

This time cold tile met my feet and I followed the vibrating sound of my cell phone against my night stand, not bothering to cover my nakedness with a robe.

As the night stand came into view, so did a tall oak. Old and venerable from years of weathering rain and storms. Six foot snow drifts. Leaves that crunched beneath my feet, echoing in a deep vibrato against my tympanum.

I knelt against the oak, leaning one gloved hand against its ancient trunk. After stabilizing myself, I studied the skull which had sunk into the mire. Black mud had crept up the cranium. White bone was yellowed and cracked. Summer, autumn, winter, spring and summer again. The cycle of seasons, dust, decay, cold, hot, rainy, snowy, had all left little of this victim. Missing mandible, shattered parietal. Fragments and shards littered the soil. I pushed away decayed leaves, revealing more shards, half covered in mud. Sticking up from the soil like crooked nails in a four-by-four.

"Female," I told Booth. "Early thirties."

"Ship it all to the Jeffersonian? Just like old times," he grinned at me, patting my back and flashing me that disturbingly sexy smile. Was he trying to make me feel guilty for leaving or glad to have returned? Either way, I smiled back at him, then turned my face back to the remains before me. I spotted what I thought was the mandible and dug my forefinger into the muck, tracing the horseshoe outline just enough to decide that yes, this was my missing bone.

Yellow tape at 90 degree angles, pegs, brushes that were frustratingly small. Fingers that felt stiff as bones from the freezing autumn temperatures exposing my skin to the biting cold.

Eventually, every last bone was released, placed along with extra soil into the evidence bags. Everything was accounted for. With the exception of a femur.

I walked through the forest, shifting leaves left and right. Kicking aside fallen boughs. I tumbled. Falling over leaves and broken boughs, finally landing in a pit of decaying cadavers. The stench. Hot. Sweet. Stomach-curdling scents that stung my nostrils. Despite being accustomed to that smell, laying among the dead when you are one of the living is something that will throw your tolerance level far to the left of center.

"Bones!" He shuffled down the little hill, mud thickening at his shoes, not caring for a moment how much they cost, despite the fact that his feet were quickly filling with questionable fluids. A hand to help a partner. Then an exchange of bewildered fear. Deathly silence.

"What the hell is going on here?" He whispered. And I wondered the same thing.

I gripped the cool porcelain and heaved until I felt that my eyes would fall from my head, then bob in the water like some macabre Halloween game. Slimy chunks of whatever had once gone down now hit the water with a puissant force, back-splashing some of the contents onto my forehead and making the process repeat itself once again. Then my cheek was back against the cold tile, easing the throbbing of my head. My job had taken the phrase, 'a day at the office' to a new level.

The duct tape stars glittered a resplendent pattern on the floor. I watched it. The full moon outside of the small window above my head let very little of the quiescent light fall on the lifeless concrete floor.


	2. Scarlet Ribbons

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part II: Scarlet Ribbons**

Rotting flesh against sterile tables. Warm with decay, cold with death. Every table held a body. Six in all. Two skeletal. Four meaty, as he put it. And people wonder why I reconsider vegetarianism so often.

They all had names. They were all loved. All were missed by someone. It was times like that when I felt like the weight of the world would push me so far down that I would l would suffocate. I would be forced to breathe in dirt, sucking it into my lungs.

Six women.

Six mothers.

Six children.

Six daughters.

Six people who I would soon understand more about than I wanted to understand about myself. Six lives lost. And I could still smell their decayed bodily fluids beneath my cuticles, in my hair.

I put that aside as tears stung my sinuses and turned my focus to the first cadaver. The first woman to be thrown like scum, the filth of the earth, thrown aside like last week's newspaper into the pit that would be her grave.

Brown dried blood coated the fleshier of the victims. Metacarpals of the hands and wrists strained, dislocated, separated like they had been hung for hours by their hands, beaten, debased, raped.

I reached down and caressed his cheek, my thumb running along the thick rough beard. Jolts of lightning running through my body, between my legs, making me only want him more. More of his lips, his hands running along my torso, his lips against my neck, my breasts, my thighs.

"What are you thinking?" I whispered, looking into those beautiful chestnut eyes of his.

"Just... how happy I am."

"That was lame." I rolled my eyes.

He rolled me onto my back, wrapping a leg around my body, playing footsie with me in the cool morning.

"It's true," he muttered against my neck.

I wrapped my legs around him.

My hands clutched the Egyptian cotton sheets as I reached climax.

Red ribbon.

"Silk," Hodgins said.

"This is one of those creepy anti-female serial killer things, isn't it?" Cam grasped her elbows.

"Not necessarily," I clarified. No matter how often I inculcate it, conclusions are jumped to on a daily basis. "There's no fact-base yet. Conclusions aren't to be jumped to. They're to be reached through logical deduction."

"Despite your inclinations to be pertinacious, I must remonstrate that there is evidence before us that cannot be ignored," Sweets cut in. Booth blinked, probably lost by all of the four-dollar words, or annoyed that Sweets felt had he had to use so many. My money's on the latter of the two.

I shot Sweets a dirty look. Pertinacious? Maybe my stubbornly persistent beliefs has helped lead to the capture of dozens of criminals. Has he thought of that?

"Red ribbon or not, the case has hardly been investigated yet. How about you keep your theories in the office, Dr. Sweets?" I pushed past him, jogging off the forensic platform and straight into a pit of tar.

He lifted my hair from my neck, threading the silken ribbon beneath. His calloused hands scratched at my neck and behind my ears. The scarlet band was tied in a bow above my left temple. He kissed me with what could only be described as convoluted passion, his tongue invading my mouth, the strong scent of chewing tobacco crawling up the back of my throat. I fought my gag reflex, closed my eyes and breathed through my nose rhythmically. I could feel flecks of tobacco floating in my saliva. I spat as soon as he pulled back.

"Beautiful," he said, running the back of his hand along my jaw.

"F-ck you," I snarled with as much hatred and fury as I could muster. It wasn't difficult. The tears sipped from the corners of my eyes. I didn't bawl. I was too furious to bawl. Too angry about being a victim.

He moved his face closer to mine, but it was still obscured by a blotch of ink in my vision. He spoke with yellowed and crooked teeth, "You keep up that f-cking attitude, I'll remove your eyes with a f-cking teaspoon, bitch." A thick mucousy ball of phlegm was drawn into his throat, then shot out, onto my cheek.

I closed my eyes. The bodies were scattered around my feet. Putrid limbs protruded from between greasy leaves and rain-soaked soil.

"What the hell is going here?" Booth whispered.

"Good question," I whispered back. Decomposing flesh, skin slippage, algor mortis. A corpse lay immediately at my feet. The very one that broke my fall. The very one whose scent I was now covered in. Algor mortis had set in. The flesh had already begun marbeling. The veins were greenish black, dull and lifeless beneath the cold flesh.

As my eyes adjusted and my view grew, the sight became more horrendously clear. One more lay a few feet off, skeletonized. Three more. One bloated, her naked breasts filled with the gases of decay like water balloons. One more, a yard or two off, had begun the stage of skin slippage, her face was white and soapy from adipocere. The flesh of the hands were falling off like old used leather gloves. The face was covered in mud, the hair matted with mud. The last was the newest of the bodies. It was bloated and lividity had made her back a deep black from pooled blood.

"You should... probably take a shower," he muttered.

"Thanks for the tip, Booth."

Darkness.

"Beautiful," he said, breathing on me, making me want to grip the porcelain once again. He reached up and pulled the red ribbon down, loosened the bow, then pulled tightly on either end, closing the circle around my neck. "Purple is your color."

I wished for breath. I could feel the pressure in my face, making my lips, nose, and eyes feel like they were filling with water, thickening, swelling. Shoots of pain, like hundreds of needles embedding themselves in my eyes. I imagined the blood vessels bursting under pressure, my eyes turning blood-red, threaded with red lace. "Stop," I choked out. Hot tears slipped down both cheeks. This time it was fear that made them fall, not anger.

He wrapped his fingers around the ribbon, tightening. If I had strength to kick, I would. If I had air, I would. I could feel the ropes tearing into my wrists, pulling them apart. My shoulder popped out of its socket, but I didn't care. Oxygen. I only want oxygen. I only need oxygen.

And him.

He smelled like Old Spice and mint. Booth.

"Here's to our partnership," he said, lifting a wine glass in the air. The cool night air made my skin prick with goosebumps, and I imagine that I was giving the man quite a view from my low cut dress. But to say that I didn't pull my jacket closed out of naivety of the situation would have been a total lie.

I saw his eyes drift southward throughout the night. Settling on my breasts.

It was all so confusing. Should partnership truly be black and white. Friends? Coworkers? Could we cross that line into lovers?

He must have seen me catch him with that last glance, because he drew in a sharp breath. "You look... great, Bones."

"And you, too. You look... very handsome." And when did he ever not?

"I'm glad you're back in D.C., Bones."

"Me, too." When I thought on it coolly, I believed that my decision to leave for six months was rational. It brought me farther along in my career, reconnecting me with my first love. But I missed him. When had this man crossed from friend to something more? More importantly, when did rationality become a thing that could no longer be considered my strong-suit?

"We should, um, go."

"Yeah," I agreed.

He pushed in my chair, then let his hand settle on my back as we walked. Where was the SUV? The concrete beneath our feet crumbled, fragmented beneath our heels as the house came into sight. Red brick loomed from gray sky. The buildings twisted into tall firs.

"OK, Bones, just hold back." He took his service weapon from its holster and handed it to me, then reached for his ankle holster. A man with a weapon? Incredibly sexy. As long as it isn't pointed at you.

"I'm not going to stay back, Booth."

He sighed and looked at me for a few seconds, then nodded.

Memories became hazy and indistinct as we walked through a world that granulated beneath our feet.

I wasn't the first to fall, he was.

"You're not leaving me again, Booth!" I pressed my fingers to his neck and prayed that it wasn't his carotid. "God, please," I whispered.

His eyes opened just enough to flash an amused expression my way before rolling into his head.

"She was shot in the head. Point-blank," Cam said.

Booth nodded. "Find the projectile?"

Cam's eyes shifted to me.

"Uh, markings on the bone suggest that it was retrieved."

"Retrieved?" He repeated with disbelief.

I nodded. "Most likely with needle-nose pliers."

"So what _do _we have?"

"Hodgins is going over particulates."

"And I should have the tox screen within the hour," Cam added.

"Why the hell is it going so slow?" I could tell he was aggitated.

"There are six sets of remains, Booth."

"Six _people_, Bones. And don't you forget it. These people, Bones, they were somebody's kid, OK? Somebody's mother, wife, daughter, what-have-you. They deserve to have their story told."

"And we'll tell it. It will just take a little more time considering the ratio of victims to squints, but we'll have your evidence. You don't think that I understand that these are people, Booth?" I could feel my pulse thudding through my head like a metronome, keeping time with my anger.

A second passed before his own fury dissipated. "I'm sorry, Bones. It's just... I've got Cullen on my ass. And--" He paused, taking in the wall I built up against his attitude. Then he pulled me into a hug.

The hot water washed over my body, cleansing me from my fears, my pain, my demons. How is it that no matter how many showers I take, the pain is always there? Always lurking, always bringing the dark things to the surface. Always percolating the repugnant, the black, the dark, the malignant into the parts where I have tried so hard to bring in light. I tipped my head back and rinsed the soap from my hair.

Hot.

Cold.

He pressed me against the door. And I let him slip his hand beneath my shirt and stroke my breasts.

The laceration made my head throb. White-hot pain. Cold with terror.

Smooth tile.

Musty air, thick with mold spores.

The knife slipped beneath the scarlet ribbon, digging into my throat, slicing it. It fell to the ground, dampened with blood.

I plunged beneath the surface of the lake and for a moment, everything went black.

------------------------------------

_I didn't think I'd repost so soon, and I won't repost so soon probably, but as it turns out I had the first chapter written when I posted this story. Let me know what you think. If you say, "bizarre" or "confusing" then I'm on the right track! _


	3. Purification

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part III: Purification**

I jerked awake. It took several minutes before I could breathe at a normal pace again. The room had dropped at least ten degrees since my last bout of wakefulness. It was just as lifeless, gray, and cold as it was hours before. Deep brown stains spattered the bare concrete. The same window glittered its sidereal light through the slits in the duct tape.

And I felt alone. For the first time in years, I felt _alone. _

Then I was back in my dream world before I could breathe in another breath of reality.

Booth's warm smile made me feel calm as I looked between him and the man whose name was fleeting.

"Bones, this is Edmond Prideaux. Eddie, my partner Dr. Temperance Brennan. You've met before?"

I shook my head slowly. "Not formally, but I've seen Agent Prideaux around."

He grasped my hand. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Brennan."

"I detect a slight accent. French Canadian?" He smiled in return. "Comment allez-vous?"

"Ah. Je vais très bien, merci."

Booth watched the exchanged with an amused expression.

"Your partner is lovely," Prideaux smiled a white charming smile.

I turned to smile at Booth just in time to see him fall to the ground, his head hitting the leaves, dry ground cover tossing in slow motion into the air, then falling to the ground once again.

Without a thought about was aiming or shooting, I stumbled over to my partner and pressed my hands to his neck. The blood seeped out quickly. Before a second even had a chance to pass, my hands were coated in the red sticky blood.

"You're not going to leave me again, Booth!" I fumbled for the cell phone, which slipped from my free hand.

Trees.

They passed on either side of me like I was descending through a vortex. I kept looking back, making sure he wasn't there.

Then he was there. And there was only one way to go. Down.

I leapt. The water coming closer, slower, then it cloaked me in glacial cold. Black, dark, icy. Sucking the air from my lungs, making my arms feel numb, making my muscles misfire, misinterpreting the signals that said, "Swim!" as signals that said, "Sink!"

And I did. I sunk. Deep beneath the icy surface, the water taking my life. And I didn't fight it. I let it take my life. Was life worth living if he was gone?

Was life worth living if he wasn't there, letting me rest my head on his bare chest, listening to him breathe in? A soft cadence of breath. In. Out. In. Out.

I turned so that I could see his face. A five o'clock shadow was darkening his cheeks and I gently caressed his rough beard with my thumb.

He smiled and ran his hand along my naked back, his finger tips falling into the grooves of my spine.

"What are you thinking?" I asked softly.

"Just... how happy I am."

"That was lame," I chastised him.

He rolled me onto my back and ran four fingers through my hair. "It's true," he smiled. One smile. That's all it took. I wrapped my legs around him as he kissed my neck. I moved my hands down his body and limned his familiar curves.

I could still feel him inside me, his body against mine, his lips against me.

Egyptian cotton sheets. Still moist and hot from the throws of passion.

Sterile hospital sheets. White. Plain. Devoid of warmth. And a hand that refused to squeeze back.

"Sweetie," a familiar voice beckoned.

I looked up and quickly brushed away tears with my sleeves. "Yeah, Ange?"

"I brought you coffee," she said, walking into the room. Her eyes shifted over to the man in the bed. "How's he doing?"

I sucked in a quaking breath before answering. "He's doing fine. He'll open his eyes soon."

Angela sat beside me and measured me for a while before speaking again. "It's induced, right? The coma?"

I nodded.

She sighed. Her hand reached out for mine.

Hands.

I plunged beneath the surface. The frigid waters engulfed my body. My larynx closed up, blocking the water from entering my lungs and the murky water swallowed me, yanking me deeper to the hell that dwelled below.

Then the hands reached into the water, pulling me from the gelid deep.

I fell into his arms on the bank.

Savior or enemy? The man with the yellow teeth drew me from my grave only to bring me to another.

"What are you going to do with me?" I asked as he dragged me over the bridge. A light snow began to sprinkle from the sky, clinging to my hair as it became ice and I shivered, my teeth chattering, my jaw tightening.

"I'm going to purify you," he said.

My eyes drifted toward the sky as white-gray clouds rolled in.

"Whoever this is," Dr. Sweets said, looking between my partner and me. "He has major issues concerning women. The act of tying a red ribbon to his victims is intimately tied to his delusional system."

"Delusional system?" I asked.

"Girls are often portrayed as wearing ribbons in their hair. Take Mary Cassatt for instance, Louis Carol's Alice in Wonderland. Minnie Mouse. Agent Booth, that wasn't meant to be funny. The point I'm trying to make is that this guy connects innocence with these ribbons. Women represent evil to him. The act of tying the ribbon represents the transformation. Child to woman. Woman to child again."

"And the rape?" Booth asked, confused.

"Another act of purification. As twisted as it is, in his mind, this purifies his victims. Most likely because he believes he himself is pure and is able to bring her to a more pure state through that act. He was most likely victimized sexually as a child."

"By his mother?"

"Sister, grandmother. A woman who was more powerful physically than he. He is rationalizing his abuse, believing that it brought about his own purification. Savior or enemy? Did this person save him or bring him to his own internal grave?"

Savior or enemy? He threw me against the red brick exterior, my face colliding with the corner of the building, the flesh bursting open on impact.

Savior or enemy? I breathed in oxygen, but wished for death. And I wondered if he knew that. And that is why he took his time.

"Where's that partner of yours?"

"Burn in hell," I hissed.

He balled up his fist and threw it at my face. The pain radiated through my cheek, making my jaw and neck throb, my head pound, my eyes bulge.

"Fiery to the bitter end."

That voice. I looked up. Past the mask. Past the sunglasses. Past the red lace of burst blood vessels that tore across my vision.

Then the black spread like ink that had been tipped onto paper, grabbing onto highways of fibers, bleeding across my sight until the blackness was all that was to be seen.

I gasped for air and opened my eyes. Reality. I had once again stepped foot into the tangible. My head had stopped throbbing, but I could tell that my fever was higher than last. If I could only stay awake long enough to contrive an escape. I watched the stars scintillate through the cracks. How much time had passed?

"What time is it?"

"Hmm?" Booth asked.

And I was glad for the hallucination. Real or manufactured, this world was so much warmer than the last. I found myself wishing I could stay there longer. Across the table from Booth. The stars twinkling overhead. And he looked so handsome, dressed down, sexy.

"Oh, nothing," I assured him.

"We should, um, go," he replied, as the script had it.

"Yeah," I agreed.

He pushed in my chair for me, then we walked down the street.

I turned the key to the ignition. It imputed my actions with a screeching cry.

"Bones! Stop turning the key."

I got out and watched him lift the hood.

"Why don't we go upstairs and I'll get my toolbox?"

A step to the right and we stood in front of his door. The keys dropped and our heads collided. A gentle touch. Eyes locked. Our lips touched and I only wanted him more. He pressed me against the door.

"I missed you, Bones."

"I missed you, too."

I let him kiss me, caress my breasts, touch my body.

The door slammed and I watched two filthy sneakers walk across the blood stained concrete I laid on.

------------------

_Today is Bones Day! Woot! Thank you all for reading!  
_


	4. Last Call

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part IV: Last Call  
**

The soft rubber padded on the floor. Chunks of concrete ground beneath the worn heels.

I tried to keep my eyes open long enough to try to piece together what he was doing. Bending down, reaching for my ankle, unlocking the padlock. The man lifted me and we were walking. In all honesty, I was stumbling, but he bore my weight as I was transferred to a smaller room.

I watched the single bulb swing in the distance, the light bouncing around, illuminating the obscured objects in the room.

The basement floor grew soft, then crumbled and grew beneath our feet. The gray flat ceiling became an open window to the world and gray autumn clouds rolled overhead.

My feet kicked the leaves. Left, right. The soil beneath becoming visible as I walked. Then I stumbled, my ankle twisting at a painful angle. The slope was steep, making it difficult for me to slow my descent.

I landed. Then I sat up slowly. Millions of red ribbons, moist with mud and blood obscured the face of the person who I had landed on.

Tentatively, I reached out and pulled a few aside. That face. Those eyes, though opaque with the mask of death, were familiar. I pulled them aside faster, quicker until he was more visible. My heart thudded in my throat, my head pounded.

"Booth. Oh, G-d, Booth." He was beneath me in the pit of death.

"What the hell is going on here?" He asked, but his lips didn't move.

I scrambled backward.

"It's not possible. I'm hallucinating. It's not possible!" The muck and mire sunk beneath my nails and fingers as I struggled up the embankment, my heels slipping in the mud, my hands grasping for anything and everything that would lend me aid.

And I was running. The trees whizzed past on either side of my head as I ran. The rain-moist leaves making my feet slip with every third stride.

The gun shot rang through the quiet afternoon. Bark fragmented an inch from my head. I turned to the left, down a path that seemed familiar. The sound of waves crashing against a shore grew louder as I ran. The boards of the ancient bridge pounded beneath my feet.

And there was only one direction to go. Down.

"Cold?" He asked as we walked into his building. I didn't have to reply. His jacket was across my shoulders before a word had even escaped.

We stopped in the stairwell. I could tell he had something to say. Frankly, I am not good at reading people, but I would have had to have been a fool not to see that he wanted to say something to me.

"Bones, I..." He started hesitantly, "It wasn't the same without you."

"You missed me?" I smiled.

"Yeah," he whispered.

"I... missed you, too."

We were at the door, then inside his apartment. He touched my face gently. "This isn't just sex with me, Bones."

"I know."

"I want to make love to you."

I leaned forward and kissed his lips. They grew cold in that moment and I pulled back as a tracheal intubator grew from the gap and oxygen pumped through it.

Without a word, Cam came into the hospital room and took a seat beside me. "How are you doing?"

"Fine. You?"

She smiled sadly and handed me a report, "Ballistic fingerprinting connected the firearm that shot Booth with a December 2002 bank robbery."

I reached for the report. "And it's not Clarence Voigt?"

"He was in Europe at the time of the bank robbery."

"Was anybody arrested?"

"No, but the detective in charge of the case said that they believed it was an inside job."

"From inside the bank?" I thumbed through the report farther, "The Centura Bank? They stole more than 500,000 dollars."

"I have a feeling someone went to the Bahamas for Christmas."

"Wait a second... wasn't the Centura Bank purchased by the Royal Bank of Canada?" I stood up abruptly and walked toward the exit.

"Where are you going?" Cam asked, bewildered by my unexpected change of direction.

"Nowhere. It's pure conjecture. I'll be right back."

Snow began to fall as I walked through the underbrush. A short red brick building grew from the ground as if it had been there for years. Firewood was stacked neatly on the outside of the building and a blue tarp had been placed on top with one chunk of wood weighing down the whole contraption.

I stood on the cutting block and peeked through a tall window, darkened with age and time. Through the greasy film, I watched as a man's figure walked slowly past. He stood by a distant window for a minute. What was he doing? What or who was he watching for out that window?

My scalp felt like it was being ripped apart as a strong hand grasped my pony tail and yanked me from to the ground. He must have been over six feet tall as he overpowered me easily. I scrambled in the snow, skittering backward until I could stand again.

He quickly yanked me back to my feet muttering something in his mother tongue before throwing me head-first into the corner of the building, my face splitting open like a ripe cantaloupe. Hot blood burst from the wound and slipped beneath my collar, soaking my shirt within seconds.

The shock of the blow caused me to falter and gasp for breath. Then he swung at me. I ducked and tripped him before running through the forest, the trees passing on either side of me like I was being sucked into a vortex, being drawn to the water, to freedom.

Icy water. A plunge to freedom, only to be drawn back into the world by a strong hand.

"What are you going to do with me?"

"Purify you."

I fell into the dark basement. I felt cold, my face throbbed with searing pain that seemed to tear at my throat. The whole side of my face felt like it was afire.

"Purify you," he said in accented syllables. Yet I couldn't fill in the missing pieces. French Canadian, but the voice did not belong to Prideaux. Was it coincidence? It just did not make sense in my fevered mind.

His toe dug into my ribs, the oxygen was drawn from my lungs as the blinding pain spread.

"Where is your partner now?"

"Last call for flight 1197 to Toronto. Last call for the 1197 for Toronto. We are now boarding all aisles. Thank you."

Exhausted travelers walked past me and I felt like the stone on the shore. The tide went out, but I stood still. Booth. Always there. And this time, he stood with a bouquet of flowers and a familiar grin.

"Flowers?"

"I know that you like daffodils, but roses were the only thing they had."

"Sure." I burned my nose in them. The luscious perfume filled my lungs, bringing me back to a thousand memories.

"Let me get your bag." He reached for it and we walked through the airport together. I saw him look my way several times. And I did the same, glancing over at him, taking in his familiar presence.

"I thought Ange was picking me up?"

"I may have bribed her."

"Let me guess. A gift certificate to Macy's? Shoes? You got her a day off? You didn't kiss her, did you?"

He just laughed and opened the door for me. "As it turns out, Angela is a lot easier to bribe than that."

"What did it take?"

"I just asked," he grinned.

I shook my head and held back my laughter. "That's not the definition of bribery, you know?"

I watched as he loaded my luggage, admiring his form. Then he came around and opened my door for me.

He blocked me with an arm and closed the door again slowly, "Mind if I bribe you now?" He leaned in close to me.

The heat rose to my cheeks, "Sure."

"Go out to dinner with me, Bones."

"Booth--"

"Not a date. You can take your car and I'll take mine. Meet at that Italian place?"

"OK," I replied, then I sat in the SUV.

Booth's cell rang as we got on the road. He answered it then turned to me, "Are you too tired to do some crime-fighting with me?"

"I'm never too tired for that."

"I'm never too tired for that," I heard my voice echo against the walls. My eyes flickered open. Even that small movement took every last bit of energy I had. Even if I wanted to escape, I wouldn't be able to get farther than the doorway before passing out again. The room I was now in was small. Six feet by six feet. Windowless. No vents. The smell of mold hung even thicker in the air, most likely from the lack of circulating air. A fan hung several feet above my head, but it was turned off, leaving the room feeling muggy and stale.

Why was I moved? To make way for another victim? Was this the next stage? Was this where I would be raped? Murdered? Left to die? Purified?

At that point, I only wanted to cry, but dehydration made that an impossible feat.

Darkness.


	5. Stages

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part V: Stages  
**

My dreams were barren at first. Empty, dark, quiet. The heat from my fever brought a myriad of childhood memories.

"Tempe!" Russ called. I turned to see his twelve year old face smiling back at me. Eyes bright, freckles sprinkling his cheeks, wearing a yellow striped shirt that he got for his birthday.

I chased him through the waves, the hot summer sun beaming down on us. The scent of salty sea water, cold surf against our toes, a gentle mist against our sun dappled cheeks.

The door closing brought me back to the small room in the cellar. This time the shoes were black, polished. As the man walked, striped socks peeped from beneath black slacks. Then he took a seat beside me.

"Sit up," he told me.

"I can't."

"Try."

I bore weight on my arm and I was surprised that it did not hurt as I thought it would. My fractured ribs didn't grind beneath the added weight, and the act of sitting didn't cause the blood to pulse painfully through my head.

"Why aren't you in the hospital?" I scolded him.

He shrugged, "As it turns out, I'm fine."

"Fine? Booth, you were shot. In the neck. The bullet knicked your corotid. You almost bled to death in my arms! You are _not _fine."

"Said the woman who... You look like hell, Bones."

"I just need a shower."

"And a doctor. C'mon. I'll drive you."

The SUV was parked directly in front of the little brick home. I settled inside of it and Booth rounded the front and hopped in.

"Am I hallucinating?"

He laughed sardonically, "Probably."

"I, um," my eyes began filling with tears and he could hear it in my voice.

"Hey, Bones," he reached over and lifted my chin. "It's going to be alright."

"You're only saying that because I'm directing my subconscious to initiate a conversation that I want to hear."

"I thought you didn't believe in your subconscious."

"No, I don't believe in psychology. Besides, it's hard not to believe in my subconscious when I'm speaking with a dead man."

"Bones." He pulled the vehicle to the side of the road, got out and came to the passenger side door. He opened it and gave me his hand, which I took before clamboring out into the sunshine. Then he hugged me. I sunk my body into his, burying my face against his neck, breathing in what it felt like to be in his arms, probably for the last time. He kissed my head, then said, "I'm not dead. I'm sorry I can't be there for you."

"I just... I miss you so much and you could be dead." He held me tighter.

"It's a medically induced coma."

"Which you have a sixty percent chance of not coming out of," I replied in a tearful voice.

"You know what, Bones?" I tipped my head back to see his face more clearly. He caressed it with the palm of his hand, his fingers threading through my hair. I took a calming breath and breathed out slowly, trying to keep my composure. "You are a difficult woman. A beautiful woman, but difficult." We laughed softly. "And I love you."

Now my eyes studied his, "What?"

"I said that I love you."

"Why... Why would you say that?"

"Because I do, Bones."

"Booth, you're an apparition."

"An apparition who loves you."

"At the risk of sounding like Sweets, if you are a wraith and I am in that cellar, then the words that come out of your mouth are the ones that I conduct you to say."

Booth considered this and grinned, "So what you really want to know is, why would you make me say that I love you?"

"Yeah," I replied weakly.

"I think it's partly because you know it's true and partly because you want to hear it."

I hugged him again, my cheek resting against his neck. "I wish I knew you were OK. I don't even know how long I've been down here."

"Twenty-four hours."

Again I looked at him and studied his face. "How did you come to that conclusion?"

"The question is, how did _you _come to that conclusion?"

I thought for a moment. "Every time I opened my eyes, I could see only stars through the duct tape."

"What else has changed, besides the stars, Bones?"

"The... the room I'm being held in."

He smiled.

"It has something to do with this room, doesn't it?" I quickly ran through the information that I knew on the victims. "Booth, it doesn't make sense. I'm not the heart person, you are. I don't know what is going on in this guy's head."

"He wants to purify women, right?"

"He believes in stages of purification. Buddha teaches seven stages of purification."

He smiled encouragingly.

"But that's too many stages, Booth. I don't think he'll drag me through seven different rooms."

"You're the anthropologist, Bones. Who else has stages of purification?"

"Oh, G-d, it's not Buddha, it's Sulfism. Sulfism teaches four stages of purification. The Nimatullahi Sulfi Order. This man has some sort of distorted view of the whole process. There are four stages. Self Being Emptied, Self Being Illuminated, Self Being Adorned, and Self Having Passed Away-or, fana. The whole idea of this group is to grow closer to G-d, but I sincerely doubt that any god would be pleased with murder."

"So what stage is this?" He looked around. We were no longer in open air, but once again in the small room with the bare bulb and lifeless fan on the ceiling.

"I don't know."

"What do you squints do when you don't know?"

"Deduce a prediction from the explanation," I said quietly, "Well I doubt this is fana. I am not dead."

"How do you know?" He smiled teasingly.

"You know I don't believe in the afterlife, Booth. After death, there's nothing. This is not nothing."

"I'll let that one slide, Bones."

"I think the ribbon is 'Self Being Adorned.'"

"OK."

"This must be Self Being Illuminated."

"It only makes sense."

"It has logical integrity," I agreed.

Booth smiled, but as he did, his face became watery and transparent.

"Booth?" I leaned forward to hold him once more. He was gone before I could reach out for him. Four stages. Four days. Stacy Kinnet had disappeared on the twelfth. She was discovered on the seventeenth and had been dead for a little more than a day. Stacy Kinnet whose breasts were full with the gasses of decomposition, whose face was muddy and soapy with adipocere. She had been through the stages.

Four stages. Four days and I was on the second day. I shook with cold, fear, and fever. How, exactly, was I to be illuminated? How did this man plan to inform me and about what? His childhood, how he became this monster? Did he plan to try to convert me through physical trauma, rape?

The room began to spin slowly, my eyes darted left to right, trying to focus on one object. The world slowed as my squeezed my eyelids shut.


	6. Distortion

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part VI: Distortion  
**

An intoxicating perfume woke me from the deep, pulled me from my fitful slumber. For several minutes, I didn't move. I breathed in the unfamiliar and familiar. Tide with Bleach and a spicy incense I could only describe as His. An inseparable thing I'd grown accustomed to. Him. Familiar, warm, a smell that brought tender memories my way.

The movement of the bed brought my eyes to take in the brilliant morning and two chocolate eyes, a sexy smile, a hand that reached up and gently whisked away a stray curl.

"Hey, Bones," he whispered.

"Hey."

I closed my eyes, breathing the tranquility that came with change. The peace that came with letting go of fear.

The darkness flooded in, stabbing me. Abducting me from the serenity of his arms to the confusion of my delirium.

My hands plunged into the victim's chest cavity, fingers pushed away the viscous, the tissues that bore no more clues, no more answers. Deeper. My fingertips rounded over swollen and soft organs, sweeping through the interconnecting ligaments. Several snapped beneath my fingers, releasing limbs, giving way to the pungent odor only comparable to putrid pork, left to rot on the counter top. Stale, fetid, eye-watering.

A hand held mine, yanking me into the cavity. I submerged into the dark, the bloody, the malodorous. Deeper. Faster. The dizzying speeds left me disoriented, nauseous.

I grasped the cold porcelain and heaved until I felt that my stomach had come out with the contents of my stomach. The chunks of vomit and mystery plane food bobbed in the bottom of the toilet. I lay my cheek back on the cool tile of my bathroom floor until my arteries no longer pulsated behind my eyes. Until the world no longer tipped and teased.

Pain had become omniscient. Knowing always where I walked. Where I breathed. Where I ate. Where I slept. It had followed me to Canada and back. It knew my number. My nightmares. It beleaguered my mind, harassed my soul, tortured my thoughts. The best thing to do in this situation, is to put it aside. Move on. Strength of mind.

I rose to my knees, raising myself with a hand on the toilet seat.

I ran the cold water, testing it with three fingers before cupping the water with two hands and splashing it against my face.

The only way was down. I leapt into the lake water which chilled my body, stealing breath from my lungs.

I gasped and watched my reflection in the mirror. I reached for the hand towel and dried my cheeks.

The whirling brought me back to the tile.

Hot and cold, twisting and spinning. My gut wrenched and I grasped at my stomach, jostling my broken ribs.

My uninjured eye flicked open and watched as a man paced a couple of feet from my head. The worn sneakers from before walked back and forth, finally settling a few inches from my nose. He reached down and grabbed me brusquely, pulling me to my feet. My body resisted the change as I fought to stay conscious.

I lurched to the chair he had brought into the middle of the room. My head sagged under its own weight, jouncing, jerking to a more upward position, then sinking once again.

"I want to believe you won't leave me, Temperance," the man with the yellow teeth said. He squatted beside me. I held off the need to close my eyes, afraid it would bring me back to my wandering mind, a place I had never trusted to begin with. "The fear is gone. Don't you see? I will purify you. You and me. Together you will see the light."

"Your ideas... of G-d... are distorted," I managed to murmur. My head tipped back, the ceiling. Fan. Light bulb. Back to the yellow teeth.

"The earth is a distorted place. I'm the bridge between the two. The world is a dark place. Full of evil people. Heaven is full of the pure. I am the bridge."

"Is that... what you call... yourself?" Ceiling. Fan. Light.

He reached up, pinching cheeks between thumb and forefinger, squeezing my face painfully. "You will see that I am right and you are wrong." His eyes burned with fury and insanity, searing through my eyes. I had no trouble staying conscious with that cold and heartless tone. His free hand twisted around and tore the mask from his head. Green eyes. A nose that hooked. Blond hair. So familiar, but unrecognizable all at once.

"How do you know me?"

"He told me."

"Your god?"

His hand whipped out, catching my open wound on a thick ring he wore. The heat spread down my neck and behind my ear. My eyes rolled. Ceiling. Fan. Light. Black.

"Bones?"

I looked up to see Booth standing in the doorway of my office. He grinned and walked over to me.

I looked around cautiously, then walked casually up to him.

His eyes looked down to my lips, then to my eyes. "Hey."

"I think sex has lowered our IQs," I said smiling.

"I don't know what you mean." Mischievous.

"It seems our conversations have been deduced to one-word _Hey_s."

He stepped closer. I stepped back, my butt bumping against my desk. He took one more step closer, effectively pinning me. The fact that I could feel his erection against my body drove me mad with desire. And the fact that we were at work was the only thing that kept me from jumping him then and there.

"_Booth! _I thought we agreed to remain professional while at work."

"Just kiss me and I'll back off."

"Fine," I replied nonchalantly, perturbed. I puckered dispassionately. I should have known better. He pulled me closer, kissing me tenderly, passionately. I parted my lips, letting him penetrate my mouth, despite my best judgment. Just as I felt my underwear grow moist, a woman cleared her throat.

Booth simply chuckled, clearly glad to be caught. I turned hot-red with a mixture of aggravation and embarrassment.

I turned my head, praying it wasn't my boss. Angela. She stood with a triumphantly surprised grin on her face, a smile that could light up the Sydney Opera House.

"Oh, hey, Ange," Booth said as he released me and stepped back. Angela looked down, then looked right back up, eyes widening. "Bones was teaching me some French."

"I'll just leave you two alone," Angela replied, then quickly made a getaway.

"French?" I crossed my arms, tipping a brow in the air.

"Think I aced?"

I threw the folder at him. The papers scattered from the binding, yellow leaves fell to the ground, gently swaying and twirling in the air before landing on the polychromatic ground.

"OK, Bones, just hold back." Booth reached for his service weapon and handed it off to me before pulling out another from his ankle holster.

"I'm not going to stay back, Booth."

He sighed and looked at me for a few seconds, then nodded.

The autumn leaves, shades of copper, crimson, and gold compressed beneath our soles. The silence was only broken by the crunch beneath our toes and the halcyon breeze that tousled my hair.

We squatted beneath a broad sassafras that grew just over the ridge from the old brick building.

"Eddie's bringing his team around the back," Booth whispered.

"Eddie?"

"You don't trust him?" My face was unresponsive, but apparently it spoke multitudes. "Eddie's a good guy. He's been with the bureau a few months now," he replied as he checked his weapon. "I don't exactly wanna have drinks with the guy--"

"Because that's a symbol of camaraderie? Conjugative drunkenness?"

"You know, Bones, when you put it that way it just sounds wrong." He paused, listening to his ear bud. "Ten-four, good buddy." He smiled at me, "Always wanted to say that. Now, hang back, Bones." He looked over at me, his expression softened. His hand slipped around my waist and he tightened the strap on my vest. "When we get home tonight, wanna replay last night's events?"

"Absolutely," I replied with a provocative tone in my voice.

"Good." He leaned close and kissed me. He smiled at me, "Voigt shouldn't be hard to take down. He's sixty-seven."

"Then why are we going in there blazing our guns?"

"Guns-a-blazin', Bones. Evidence tied Stacy Kinnet to this property four days before she died. You go in there ready to go all Chuck Norris on his ass and you won't get any surprises. Know what I mean?"

I shook my head slowly.

"Didn't think so. Just stay low."

He stepped out slowly. A couple of agents rounded the property silently. I watched as they crept through the shrubbery.

_Pop-Pop-Pop!_

Booth fell to the ground several feet in front of me. My gun slipped to the ground as I stumbled to his side and blood pulsed from his neck with every beat of his heart. It pumped fast at first, but it slowed as I pressed my finger tips to his neck. My nightmares had followed me through time. I was reliving an ordeal that I thought would never seek me out again.

"You're not leaving me again, Booth! God, please," I whispered.

His eyes opened just enough to flash an amused expression my way before rolling into his head once again.

Prideaux rounded the residence and quickly wrapped his arm around Booth.

"Don't! Don't move him!" I tripped after him, trying to keep my fingers to Booth's neck.

"He'll die out here, Brennan!"

Icy fear coursed through my body.

"He'll die out here."

"You'll die here." This time it was my own voice. I woke up, this time laying on my right side. Naked. In a shallow pool of water.

----

_I just wanted to mention how blown away I was at the replies with the last chapter! You made my day! Seriously! Thank you all!_

_And just in case you didn't know, Chuck Norris doesn't do push-ups. He pushes down the world!!!_


	7. Exhale

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part VII: Exhale  
**

The placid water rippled as my breath escaped. I watched as the silver waves stirred from my exhalation, accumulated against the blue basin, then faded into the background.

For several seconds not a thought in my mind was kindled. I took in the sensations, assuring myself that this was reality once again. My left eye adjusted to the darkness of the room. The gray chair, chipped and stained, that I had been sitting in was against the wall near the door. I was laying in a plastic tub, broad and low with brightly colored fish painted in the bottom.

My right arm was warm, but the rest of my body was chilled.

The stages. Had I been raped?

I slowly raised myself onto one elbow. That small amount of exertion left me gasping for air. Oxygen wheezed through my throat, my breasts rose and fell with a hurried cadence. The movement tipped the ground at a sharp angle and back again. The pulsation in my face began once again. _THUD-THUD-THUD._ It was a rhythm that was a terse reminder that my life had not yet ended. I was there. In a small room. Laying in a child's wading pool. Naked. Naked emotionally, naked physically, naked in my mental discernment.

The water undulated beneath me, cresting against the sides of the pool. Was that a robicund undertone I noticed in the tiny waves? I focused once again, then my eyes were drawn to my thighs. Pale white with scarlet streaks of blood that stretched from crotch to knees.

My hands shook and the elbow that had kept me propped began to yield to the weight it held. I resigned to the water once again.

Truth began to fall like stones from heaven. The third stage was not too far off now. And it did not matter whether or not I remembered the second or the first.

Where was Booth?

I closed my eyes.

The door opened and the familiar black-slacked, striped-socked man walked in and knelt down beside the pool of water.

"Bones."

I looked up. "Oh, G-d."

"Not happy to see me?"

"I am," I said, not afraid to betray the weariness in my voice. "I just-- I know you're not really here."

"Sit up, Bones."

I lifted onto the elbow and sat in the pool, pulling knees to chest.

He took off his jacket and wrapped it around my bare shoulders.

"What happened?"

"Stage Two. I think I was unconscious the entire time." I wiped away moist hair that clung to my cheeks, my finger slid across the open laceration on my cheek. By then it was swollen to the point that my eye was completely closed. "I've been running a fever. It's uncertain when, but I surmise that I will probably go into septic shock somewhere within the next day."

Booth pulled me close into a warm embrace.

I wanted so badly to go back to a better place. If the last moments were here in his arms, I'd be truly glad.

I closed my eyes and remembered how he felt, how he smelled. Every nuance.

To be back in that apartment.

He reached up and smoothed a curl behind my ear. "This isn't just sex with me, Bones."

"I know," I replied heavily.

"I want to make love to you." What was it about his voice that was so assuring? That made me feel like what he said about being one with someone could truly be? "Oh, hey, Bones. I didn't mean to make you cry."

I smiled, "I wasn't going to cry, Booth."

"Admit it."

"I..." I let my eyes wander around his apartment, then they were drawn once again to his eyes. "Nobody has ever said that to me."

His other hand touched my face, both holding my face tenderly. "Has anybody told you that you are amazing? Intelligent, beautiful, everything I could ask for in a friend and partner."

I tilted my chin and pressed in gently. He caught my lips once again. Softly, he drew me closer. After years of wanting him to pull me close, he finally was. I may have let some of his sexual signals fly under my radar in the past, but there was no mistaking the signals he sent my way as his hands slipped beneath my blouse and his fingers stroked my nipples.

He kissed my neck, nibbling at the supple skin at my clavicle. Every subdued and erotic touch sped up the passion of the moment. I tore at his shirt. White plastic buttons fell to the ground, creating a soft percussion of silent taps on the floorboards.

Satin and lace dropped alongside the buttons and slacks.

"Let's just... right here..." I begged breathlessly.

With that, his heated speed came to a halt.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Not here, Bones." His cheeks were flushed. He reached for my hand and he walked me slowly to his bedroom.

His lips met my forehead, then my lips, neck, ear, breast. I fell into the sheets and he onto me.

"Cullen's gonna be pissed," he whispered, a hint of a facetiousness on his tongue.

"Screw Cullen," I whispered back. "We can keep it professional."

"Not tonight." His aroused penis divided my thighs.

"Stage two," he returned.

My left eye open. Pain stung my right. I could hear the voices of two men. They spoke in a fractured English/French fusion.

"Good. I just need to go back to the office for a minute. I should be back in a few hours."

"Don't want to let the cat outta the bag, eh?"

"Bingo."

Those voices. One belonged to the man with the yellow teeth. Who was the other man?

I scrutinized my memories.

Two voices.

"Bingo."

"I should be back in a few hours."

"Stage two."

"Bingo."

Thoughts and memories oozed together. Colors and a sound track of a man whose face I could not recall convulsed and rolled into a grotesque hallucination.

I unzipped the body bag. Two sky-blue eyes clouded in a white sheath stared back inertly.

I jumped back, tipping over a tray of instruments. Metal and platform met with cacophonous clatter.

I slid a cotton mask courtesy of the airlines over my eyes, drowning my vision in blackness. Music buzzed in my ear, lulling me to a dreamless rest.

A cart jingled past me as a stewardess pushed a cart through the middle aisle. She passed me, noticing my relaxed posture and assumed state of slumber.

"Sir, would you like something to drink?"

"Uh... Got any bourbon?"

Clinking commenced and before long, the woman announced her victory with an, "Ah-Ha!"

"Bingo," the man said.

I inhaled sharply, an action that brought me back to the little room in the cellar. "He was there."

And I knew. I couldn't wait for fate to take hold of me. I was the master of my fate.

-------------------------------

_Thank you all once again for your replies! _

_If you like this story, by the way, "The Prodigal Son: The Three of Us" is written with as much care. It's on my profile. FYI: I posted all of the chapters at once on that one, so there are very few replies. _


	8. Alibi

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part VIII: Alibi  
**

The sound of bare hands and knees patting against cold concrete was the first thing to hit my senses. It is indescribable how each bodily movement took a hundred percent of my exertion and concentration. Each muscle fiber had to be prompted to contract, release, tense, and relax again.

Two feet from the blue pool, my body crumpled into a trembling ball. Misfiring synapses left my head feeling heavy and weightless, my eyesight dipping in and out of blackness, my tendons and sinews crying out for rest.

My forehead laid against the ground, sharp pits and protuberances digging into my flesh.

I swallowed what felt like sand passing through swollen glands.

My chest heaved with every breath as my vision once again began to immerse into a fuzzy, murky world of fantastic colors and nightmarish memories.

"Stay conscious, Brennan."

Despite my protestations, the indentations of the ground under my head smoothed and glimmered. The walls grew transparent. The air thinned.

A short man in his late forties flashed an exhausted smile my way. Weary passengers passed me by. Conversations murmured a soft hum as my feet made their way to the exit. My memories were somehow no longer as clear, as touchable and realistic as before. I found myself in a state of two minds as I relived those memories. One half existed only in the imaginary, the other was begging myself to wake up and fight.

A man in a tan jacket walked past, his shoulder bumping into mine and jostled my bag to the ground.

"Sorry, madame," he muttered. He snatched it up in a quick movement and handed it to me before walking past. I followed the transition to where Booth's face appeared through the crowd.

Rewind.

"Sorry, madame."

Pause.

He held the bag out to me, frozen in time. Eyes the shade of scorched pea soup. Dirty blond hair. Hooked nose.

_Not _the man in the mask, but distinct facial features similar to the man with yellow teeth.

"Sorry, madame."

That voice. So distinct.

I stopped in the middle of the terminal. The faces who passed me up became unclear. Some stood still.

Booth's face remained the same. Excitement etching every angle, eyes searching the crowd.

"What did he say to me?" I asked myself. Simultaneously, I heard the words ricochet off from concrete walls and back into my ears.

Bright terminal lights. "Sorry, madame."

Calm office low-lights. "Your partner is lovely."

Panic among falling leaves. Hands soaked in blood. "He'll die here, Brennan!"

A world submerged in darkness. "Bingo."

A lightning quick chill extracted me from the plane to the frigid basement floor.

For once, my gut had told me something true. Perhaps it was the fever that was replaying my thoughts inaccurately. People existed in my dreams but not in real life. People existed in my fevered recollections that were perhaps merged with the real people... People who...

I squeezed my eyes shut. The right burned its objections to my parietal lobe.

Things were becoming less and less clear. And despite the pain of my eye, it was significantly less than just an hour before. My body had ceased to shiver, but an icy hand to my forehead revealed two reasons why,aside from physical exertion, I _ought _to be trembling.

Why was I crawling toward the chair again?

I continued crawling at a sluggish pace.

The door swung back. The man with the yellow teeth immediately dug his toe into my bruised ribs, making me tumble back. I curled into the fetal position, my hands protecting the back of my neck as he continued kicking my unprotected body.

After a few furious kicks, he bent down and rolled me onto my back. He lowered his face and body, the scent of chewing tobacco rolling from his tongue. Black flecks clung to his incisors. His fingers latched onto my neck, strangling any air from entering my lungs. I clawed at his arms feebly.

"So I was thinking," he breathed. The odor from his breath was a mixture of tobacco and tooth decay. "Now that the little brother's out to play, I thought we could have a little alone time. You know, outside of the business side of our relationship."

His hand released. My lungs sucked in the air, blood once again filled my lips, cheeks, and nose and tingled as the oxygen reached the tissues. His hand ran down my arm, then back up my side toward my breast.

_Take action! Now!_

And my body listened to the command, drawing my knee to my chest and straight into the man's testicles.

He fell onto his back and scrambled backward grasping at his groin. Apparently he didn't think I had it in me. So that was the way it was. He waited until the women didn't have a breath to call their own, then he pounced on them, victimized them, took their dignity away before murdering them and leaving them to die. I wasn't about to be one of those women.

He was quick to seize my throat one more time, lifting my body easily and slamming my head against the cellar wall.

"Now this is personal." His fingers released and I fell to the ground, once again gulping in the musty air.

He made it to the door before I was able to press out a question, "And... it wasn't... before?" I lifted my eyes to the man in the doorway wearing camouflaged military style pants and a flannel shirt.

He walked up and squatted beside me. "It's always been about the killing." His voice was terrifyingly calm and controlled. As if every word were pregnant with a deeper, more horrible truth.

He reached down and began to tuck a stringy lock behind my ear. I quickly snapped his hand away. "What about the stages? I thought... this was some sort of righteous redemption of the damned."

"Then I guess it's a good thing we chose you, then. Right, Miss Atheist?"

I allowed my eyes to look up at the man. "I don't understand. Is this about your god or murder?"

"Both," he shrugged. "Makes for a great alibi, right?"

"I don't know what you mean." I sucked in the air, letting my spinning head restabilize.

"When G-d tells someone that it's OK to kill, it makes for a great alibi. I'm not crazy, Dr. Brennan. I know that there are cops out there... After people like me... And sometimes they succeed...They catch us... And when I tell the jury that the Big Guy upstairs talks to me and tells me to kill people, I'll plead insanity... And... I'll be playing chess for the rest of my life... Reading Shakespeare and eating bonbons... Until then... I'm going to wrap a red ribbon around your pretty little head, drag you out into the woods and put a bullet in your head. How's that for a Saturday evening?"

"I'd agree that you were insane, Mr. Prideaux, but... I'm afraid that if I were to agree that they wouldn't put a needle in your arm." I stared coldly at him. The look he gave me grew increasingly stony until he stood abruptly and disappeared from the room. He returned with a white robe, stained with dirt and blood from its previous users and threw it on me. "Put that on. Stage three has just arrived." He turned and slammed the door behind him.

Indeed, if the third stage was upon me, I wasn't about to take it sitting down, figuratively speaking.

----------------------

_Last night's episode was great! _

_I hope that you all enjoyed this new chapter. ;) Leave a comment if you like. No pressure. hehehe_


	9. Revenge

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part IX: Revenge  
**

The robe cloaked me in memories as I plunged into a distant world.

Early morning.

Light filtering through the cotton fibers.

Warmth from two bodies laying side beside, no shame in their nudity.

The salty smell of his sweat mixed in cologne.

He pulled the sheet over our heads. The morning sunlight beamed through the crisp sheet. We simply looked at one another for what seemed like minutes. Naked, blanketed in a tent of secrecy. So close to one another, our body heat radiating and warming the air around us.

He raised his arm, resting his head in the crook of his elbow. I admired the curves of his biceps and triceps, how his infraspinatus merged into a well developed pectoralis. Even relaxed, each muscle was quite visible. Brown chest hairs curled from his navel and across his chest. Oh my G-d what a sexy man.

"Hey," he smiled. His finger tips languidly traced my jaw, my shoulder, side, hips, belly.

"Hey," my lips twitched into a radiant grin that had only ever been reserved for him and him alone.

"So... last night."

"Technically this morning, too."

"Do you think it was a mistake?" His face grew austere, his grin dissipated.

"I've never done this before," I replied after a beat.

"I doubt that, Bones," he said with a teasing grin.

"Not sex, Booth. Making love... I don't think that this could be a mistake, in spite of the consequences."

A sexy smile painted his lips. He leaned close and kissed me sensuously, then touched his forehead to mine. "I don't think it was, either."

The lights flickered and dimmed, as did the vibrancy of my memories.

I was determined that stage three wouldn't take me by surprise. By nature, I am a fighter.

The filthy robe crossed my shoulders with care not to jostle my ribcage.

As I crawled toward the chair at the other end of the room, I could feel my ribs rubbing together. From the raw intensity of the pain created by those simple movements, I supposed that the third through sixth vertebro-sternal ribs were fractured to varying degrees. Beads of sweat dampened my hair, the scent of mildew from the robe hung in the air like a dense fog. I fought nausea both from pain and the moldy robe.

A slow minute passed before I finally reached the dilapidated seat, speckled with paint with silver nails beginning to pull out at the seams. I grasped a chair leg and the cross bar between the two front ones and began to wriggle. Several times my sight descended into darkness and I had to battle for consciousness. I did not know when Eddie Prideaux's brother would return, but I knew it could be any minute. I wasn't about to become a victim. Another blanched and bloodless corpse to be dissected and boiled, taken apart and studied.

Darkness.

The black body bag was slowly unzipped by white-gloved hands revealing a wide-eyed cadaver, eyes once azure now clouded by death.

I blinked and continued wiggling the chair leg. The nail had been worked an inch out of the leg when a voice began to grow louder as Prideaux made his way down the hallway.

"Hey, Eddie... Yeah, I'm just about to take care of the doc right now..."

I began to put more force into the action of my hands, twisting and waggling as the nail worked its way lethargically from the chair.

"Good deal, good deal. Yeah... if he was awake, he'd hunt us down and shoot us between the eyes."

My hands stilled. Was he talking about Booth?

"Hey, where'd you put that box of bullets you got the other day?" I heard a click. The distinct sound of the man cocking a handgun. "Nah. I've got two bullets. Plenty."

I bent down and took the nail between my molars and pulled with all my might. The nail scratched against my teeth, digging into a filling.

The handle on the door jiggled as Prideaux laid his hand down on it.

The nail came out. I took it from my teeth and quickly wove it into the sleeve of the robe, then scrambled back several feet from the chair.

The door opened and the yellow-toothed Prideaux brother snapped his cell phone closed. He walked casually up to me, reached into his pocket and pinched snuff which he tucked between his teeth and cheek. I quickly calmed my beating heart.

_Now is not the time, Brennan. _

He cocked his gun and took several quick steps toward me, reached for my arm and brusquely yanked me to a standing position. His hands twisted my arm painfully behind my back.

"Today's the day to meet your maker, if you believe in that stuff."

He dragged me out of the door and down the hallway. I tripped over my own bare feet, my legs feeling wasted and weak, my head feeling like somebody was standing on my skull. The door opened and the blinding light of the sun in the sky took my vision once again. We walked to an old Ford, red and faded from the years. The door creaked then snapped sharply open. He tossed me in as if I were only half my size.

The door slammed, then he rounded to the front, climbing in and beginning the rough engine. It garbled and growled before starting down the road.

"Where are we going?"

He looked over at me, contemplating whether or not to answer. The smell of exhaust drifted through his partially opened window. "Not to the old place. FBI's watching it like a hawk. You get to be the first to try out the new lo-cal."

My fingers bent inward, touching the cold metal of the bent nail. My eyes drifted to the road. It had to be the right place. The right moment. They drifted back. His .357 was tucked into his jeans, the handle was visible and every few seconds, he would reach up and touch it self-reassuringly.

Maybe if I was quick...

His eyes shot over to me, "Don't even think about it. I know what you're thinking and you won't win. You don't got the strength to fight me."

The trees passed us at a greater speed as the Ford turned onto a rural dirt road. Gravel popped under the tires and dust billowed up, surrounding the truck in agrayish-brown veil. Through the dust, I could see an embankment cutting into the road-side. Tall firs grew up from the surroundings.

I tightened my seat belt.

My finger tips touched the cold metal once again. I kept my eyes on the road as the nail worked its way from the sleeve.

We turned onto another rural road, this one was paved with thick gravel. The Ford lacked shocks and we jounced around in our seats, effectively covering the fact that the nail was now gripped between white knuckles.

"We all die a little bit, Bones..." Pictures of people who had died at my hands flashed like a mental slide-show through my memories. _Flash-Flash-Flash. _

The grip on the nail weakened.

Hallucinations of my face covered in muddy, blood-soaked red ribbons. My blue eyes staring lifelessly back at me as the zipper's teeth unlocked. _Flash-Flash-Flash._

The grip on the nail tightened, my teeth gritted, my head spun, my heart pulsated in my throat and chest.

Like a band-aid. I shut my eyes for a moment. They reopened and fixated on Prideaux.

_Now!_

My fist shot out of my sleeve. Green eyes, full of surprise and terror locked on mine before the nail plunged into his neck. Flesh snapped and blood began to ooze from the wound, spurting in time with his heartbeat. The hot sanguine fluid created a river down my arm and pooled in my armpit.

His hands reached up for his neck, then in a final attempt at revenge, his fingers began to fumble for his weapon. I sunk immediately into the seat and slammed my left foot on the gas.

With a free hand, I unhooked his seat belt.

The Ford began to peel out on the gravel, then it jerked right and tore into the trees. My hands flew up over my face as the smaller saplings whipped at the windshield, creating a web of glittering fissures in the glass. _Clack-Clack-Clack-Clack! _

I opened my eye in time to watch as a larger tree loomed before the vehicle. The front end slammed into the tree, my body pulled tight against the seat belt and searing pain rippled from my ribs to my back.

Prideaux was far less fortunate. His body was hurled forward from the force of the impact, his head and torso launched into the wheel. The nail was driven farther into the soft tissue of his throat. His hand dropped limply to his side.

The Ford came to a stop.

Steam rolled up from the hood of the truck.

I looked over at my companion, now laying very still, his head and upper body resting against the steering wheel. Blood soaked his clothing and was smeared all over his hands and neck.

I hesitated and watched his chest for several seconds for signs of breath being taken in. I reached out and touched his wrist. No sign of a radial pulse. I reached up to his neck. Same result.

I blinked hard, trying to focus my blurry vision.

_Now is not the time to dip into the dream world._

_No!_

I blinked again.

_Stay awake!_

My head slumped to the side, my forehead rested against a cracked passenger side window.

"Tell me something I don't know about you."

"I should be getting up right now," I smiled.

"Eh. I'll tell Cam we got a call."

"But that's deceptive."

His lips brushed my collar bone. My chin. My lips.

"Something else, Bones. Something that doesn't have to do with anthropology or murder."

I followed his spine with my finger tips as I thought. I looked up. So multifaceted, those eyes of his. "I don't think I deserve you."

His fingers ran across my jaw, then over my lips. "Everyone deserves to find their soul mate."

My eye flickered open.

How long had I been unconscious? I looked over at Prideaux and touched his wrist once again. This time he was much cooler.

Eddie. When would he come searching for his brother?

How would I get away?

His cell phone. I patted each of his pockets until I found the rectangular bulge of his cell.

The screen revealed that there were two missed calls. Eddie. Ten minutes ago. Eddie. Five minutes ago. I was running out of time. No service.

I snatched the cell phone and tucked the gun into the terry robe's belt. I reached for the handle and opened the truck's door. It creaked loudly. I stretched a leg to the debris covered ground and immediately fell under the weight of my own body on weakened legs.

Where did the cell go?

I began to sift through the dried leaves and twigs that coated the landscape.

"Come on!"

As if on command, the clouds parted and the sun glimmered on the screen. I took it into my hands and began to make my way as far from the truck as possible. I half-crawled, half-stumbled into the dense forest. It would not be difficult to spot the truck from the road. And I needed out of there before Eddie Prideaux began to pursue me.

The sound of tires grinding on the road a hundred yards off brought me to my knees. I squatted behind a large fallen tree.

The car came to a halt.

"Vic? Vic!" Leaves and branches were crushed under hurried feet. The screech of the Ford's driver's-side door. Silence.

I held my breath.


	10. A Numbers Game

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part X: A Numbers Game  
**

A vehement outcry nearly shook my resolve to remain crouched behind the decaying white oak.

"Nooooo!" The Ford's door snapped shut, rebounding from the rusted metal and screeching slowly open once again. "You _cunt!_ Where are you? You _bitch!_"

I leaned on an elbow and caught a glance at Agent Prideaux, his face obscured by brush as he stalked through the fallen timber and debris caused by the wreck. His black tie was loosened, his shirt sleeves rolled above the elbows, perspiration moistening his thin blond hair. Rage twisted his features into a raw red glower.

He drew his side arm from his shoulder holster and fired it into the air. _Blam!_ The blast drew a handful of wintering birds from the trees. Their black bodies retreated into the autumn gray sky, their caws muted by the low hanging clouds.

"Come on out, Dr. Brennan. Let's just make this quick." His voice was cold, phlegmatic. As icy as the chilled vaporous air.

He stepped over a large shrub, his black loafers sinking into a patch of snow.

_"Comment voulez-vous être enterré?" _How do you want to be buried? "My guess? Cremation. You seem like the cremation type." He loaded the weapon and cocked it, then continued toward the treeline. "I tend to lean towards the mass-burials, but for you can make an exception."

The vision from my one good eye was foggy at best from hemorrhagic blood vessels. Getting an accurate shot would be next to impossible under the circumstances and would most likely waste the ammunition.

Two bullets.

_Should I wait for a close-range shot?_

My hand dropped into the threadbare robe and retrieved the cell phone. I squinted at it.

One bar.

Why couldn't my kidnapper have gotten his cell through a company with less patchy service?

I stretched across the length of the log, my bare legs and stomach making contact with the frigid ground. A chill chased my spine as I extended my arm as far as it would stretch.

Two bars.

Would it be enough to make a call? And to whom? The last phone number I had memorized was in 1995. Pre-cell phone era. At least for me. And there hadn't been a need to memorize a single number since.

911.

My thumb, whose nail was caked in filth and dirt, descended on the 9-key.

It beeped in a loud A-Sharp tone.

The agent's .38 cracked through the air. The oak splintered just inches above my head. Fine saw dust rained down.

My free hand brushed scarlet blood mixed with white snowflakes from my cheek.

"Don't move him!" My voice echoed back to me, sounding much more unnerved than it usually does.

"He'll die out here, Brennan!"

I tripped over my feet, trying desperately to keep my hand on Booth's neck, and stumbled to the back of the ambulance that had just pulled up to the edge of the property.

"Ma'am, you can't ride with us." He was a young paramedic with curly hair and facial features indicative of Jewish ancestry.

"I'm riding with you. This is my partner."

An EMT and another paramedic gathered around the stretcher. A short red-headed woman straddled his chest and began chest compressions while the other team member began to intibate.

"Are you injured?" His voice was gruff. I pulled my eyes from my partner to the paramedic.

"Well, no, bu--"

He pushed my hand out of the way and pressed his gloved one on Booth's throat.

"I'm sorry, it's hospital policy."

The doors closed. Lights, red, white, red, white flashed against trees, flooding the branches in unnatural color.

Another hallucination.

_Go back, Brennan! Go back!_

First sensation. Cheeks so hot that they caused my vision to obnubilate and swirl like oil paints under an artist's brush. Insects with heads and jowls ridiculously disproportionate to their thoraxes and abdomens.

I breathed deeply, dirt entered my nasal passages with the inhalation. I resisted the urge to cough. It wasn't rational. Prideaux knew I was hiding in the woods. Feverish and infected, it was obvious that I hadn't gone far and he obviously knew my position by then. So, why did I try to keep so silent?

Something snapped to my right. A twig under foot. Before my mind had the chance to process what was occurring, he was on top of me. His hand to my throat, the cold circular barrel of his weapon to my temple.

My lungs were full of live coals. The heat scorched the tissues and wrenched the life from my body. Just as the fire had spread my limbs, he released the grip just enough so I could breathe, which I did gratefully.

The fire was slowly extinguished.

"You really fucking piss me off, Brennan. I can't wait to watch you die. I haven't decided how, yet." Eyes as green as his brother's, teeth much whiter. Every muscle tremored with misdirected hatred and fury. He gave my neck a squeeze, then he holstered his weapon, and fished the gun from the robe's belt and tossed it into the trees. His hand remained on my neck the entire time. "It's like an early Christmas. Fucking presents in November."

"How--s that?" I grunted, pressing his hand away from my neck unsuccessfully.

"Not every day you get to kill two agents in one day." His eyes glinted. He unsheathed the weapon and pressed it against my temple again.

"Wha--?"

"They pulled the plug thirty minutes ago. I saw his little boy. Patrick, right? He was crying his little eyes out. His ex was there. And you know what was going through my mind the entire time?"

My feisty remark never passed through my larynx.

"How she's got a nice rack on her. Firm and supple. Then they snapped that toe tag on Booth and rolled him to the morgue. Merry Fucking Christmas, Ed."

Wrong thing to say, Prideaux. The rage built until I could feel my entire body quaking with impassioned wrath.

My right hand began to search for anything. Within a second, my nails clutched a hard wooden object which I promptly bashed into the side of the man's head.

He fell back, dropping the gun. His blazing green eyes fixated on me, then looked more irate than ever. Jumping forward, he pounced on me once again, his hands clamping onto my neck. He slammed my head against the ground to emphasize his point.

Ice on a forehead.

He smelled like Old Spice and mint.

Back to earth.

"Bad move, Brennan. Now you're going to make you suffer." His breath was a stomach-twisting mixture of cheese and cinnamon, a far cry from the delusion just moments before.

A black dot appeared on Prideaux's bottom lip. The dot grew and leeched until it obscured his face.

Angela 'choked up' on an imaginary baseball bat. "It's a choke-up."

Zack leaned in, "To foreshorten the fulcrum."

The ink receded.

With the last bit of energy I had left, I swung at Prideaux's parietal. Once again, he backed off a bit, then came at me again.

I stumbled to my feet and choked up on the chunk of wood in my hands, my fingers gripping the frosted weapon. It collided with Prideaux's head.

He staggered. Lurched toward me.

_Thunk! _

I ignored the pain of tensed muscles against fractured ribs.

He stumbled, snatched up the forgotten .38 and aimed at me. His finger squeezed.

_Bam!_

A bullet whizzed by my head.

I fell to my knees, my lungs heaving, never able to draw in enough oxygen. My body threatened to shut down, go into sleep mode.

_It's not a time to back down, Bones._

Bones.

I didn't take the time to process my internal use of the nickname. I pushed a hand on a knee and stood once again. One last burst of adrenaline. I ran forward, bashing the small log into the side of Prideaux's head once again.

His weapon fell to the ground.

My veins pulsed, a response to a raised blood pressure, physical stress, and other factors.

He reached up and touched his head. The flesh on his face was split down the bridge of his nose, across his forehead and behind a mangled ear. Sticky red blood bubbled from the wound and down his neck and cheek.

His knees buckled and he fell face-first to the ground.

Blackness. Flashes of light. Duct tape stars.

The screaming sirens of police cars.

Soil moistened from melting snow cooling a swollen cheek.

The last thing I remembered was the thin figure of an African-American woman standing over me.

"Cam?"

An obvious aberration.

"Told you I used to be a cop."

Other figures appeared around her, then the visions merged together into an amorphous meld of shapes and colors.

I laid my cheek against Booth's hand. Hospital white sheets billowed around his still body like gossamer waves rolling against a rocky shore.

"Sweetie?" Angela stood at the door. She smiled weakly and sat beside me, offering a cup of coffee. "I brought you coffee." Her gaze drifted to Booth. "How's he doing?"

"He's doing fine. He'll open his eyes soon." I was lying to myself, though. I didn't believe it was true. Logically speaking, the chances were against him ever opening his eyes again and in favor of him laying in bed for the rest of his life.

However long that would be.

A week. A month. A decade. Until he took his last breath.

"It's induced, right? The coma?"

I nodded.

She reached for my hand. It was the key to the flood gates. A tear slipped down the bridge of my nose and dropped onto the sheets.

Her arm slipped around my shoulder and she drew me near.

"I'm a mess, Ange. I--I never told--I never let him know..." Wait, that's not right. I did let him know. Making love through the night. Sharing innermost thoughts in the early morning.

"I know, sweetie. I believe you'll get that chance."

Calm in the memory. Tortured in mind.

My eye cracked enough to see a nurse walk in, check the IV drip, pull a thermometer from my parched lips and mutter, "Temp's down."

"Oh, thank goodness!" Russ' voice.

The sterile white hospital room blurred into a cloudy white macrocosm.

----------------------

_I apologize for the wait. I hope you all had a great holiday weekend! (Thanksgiving, USA). I have enjoyed all of your comments & compliments! Thank you all very much!_


	11. Torment

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part XI: Torment  
**

An acousma of voices, muddled and befuddled. Smeared and twisted. Mixed and dabbed.

A curio of mirages that danced and mocked me. Taunting and laughing. Shrilling and thrilling.

Then all was silent. My mind was vacuous, empty, barren.

A steady beeping.

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

More voices.

Softly they spoke. One responded in turn. Gentle laughter. Sigh.

"Sweetie?"

My eyelid felt as if it weighed ten pounds. The shutter raised.

"Brennan?"

Cam and Angela stood over me.

"Jeez, you scared the hell out of me."

"Where am I?" I knew the answer before the question had passed my lips. White sheets. I'd been here before. "Where's Boo--"

Angela pressed her cheek against me and gave me a careful hug. A kiss on the forehead. "Sweetie. How do you feel?"

I tried to sit up to no avail. "Sore."

Cam smiled with relief. "It's good to have you back, Brennan."

"Did I see you...?"

A dimple dipped into her cheek, "Yes, you did."

"How?" It had felt good to sleep, but despite my best efforts, my voices still weak and frustratingly soft.

"I connected the dots."

"What dots?" Angela asked the question that was about to slip past my lips.

"Well, Dr. Brennan left the hospital in such a hurry that I did a little snooping around for myself. I looked a little into the bank heist in Canada. They had only one still of the guy."

"Which I clarified through nearest neighbor interpolation and bilinear filtering." Angela stated, then smiled. "You're getting that 'I don't know what that means' look again. Basically means I used Photoshop to interpret the spaces between pixels to make the picture clearer."

"Once we had a face, I took it to Cullen who sent me to the new head of the case."

"Prideaux," I said.

"Nail on the head. And he gave me the run-around time after time, saying that they'd already investigated that angle."

"I don't remember why I went there."

"I don't know, either. I was hoping you could fill in those holes."

"Why'd you suspect Prideaux?"

"Public records. Clarence Voigt is Prideaux's third cousin by marriage."

I processed the information as well as I could. Only a few seconds passed before the sedatives began to take effect once again.

Before the fog had a chance to roll in, I asked, "Booth?"

"Sweetie, they took him off--"

The hospital room vanished, the faces of my friends diffused into a million effervescent particles then dissipated into nothingness.

What was Angela trying to say?

"Sweetie, they took him off life support."

"Sweetie, they took him off oxygen."

"Sweetie, they took him off from the intensive care floor?"

My feet lowered to a tiled floor.

I walked out of the hospital and into the night, pulling a light wrap around my shoulders.

"Excuse me," I muttered.

A blond woman scooted in her chair. Her datelooked oddly familiar. Blond hair, green eyes.

"Bones!"

I pulled my eyes from the man and his date, walking past the dining couples to where my partner sat. He rose to his feet and pulled out my chair. I hesitated. I don't like to be catered to. But I sat anyway. No complaints. It wasn't the first time Seeley Booth had played the gentleman card and to say that I secretly loved it was an understatement.

"Sorry, the line for the lady's room was ridiculous."

"No worries," he smiled.

I leaned forward slightly, knowing full well how it made my breasts press together enticingly.

His eyes lingered.

"Here's to our partnership," he said, lifting a wine glass in the air. The cool night air made my skin prick with goosebumps. I wondered if my nipples were visible beneath the dress.

Partnership. His eyes drifted southward. There was no line tonight. No lines. Just two friends eating dinner. Two friends who might become something more.

"To our partnership." I raised my glass. They clinked together.

His breath hitched in his throat. "You look... great, Bones."

"And you, too. You look... very handsome." And when did he ever not?

"I'm glad you're back in D.C., Bones."

"Me, too." I was becoming less and less rational as the night wore on.

"We should, um, go."

"Yeah," I tucked in my chair almost too eagerly.

A car that refused to run.

A jacket around chilled shoulders.

We stood outside of his apartment. Keys dropped to the ground. Foreheads collided.

And that is where memories and hallucinations diverged.

"Bones. I'm sorry. You OK?"

I pressed my fingers to the aching spot. "Ow."

He chuckled and touched my forehead tenderly.

Then his eyes lowered and met mine. His fingers traced my face slowly, stopping at my chin.

Then I felt this indescribable ache. And I only wanted his lips to touch mine. For us to race into the apartment, start ripping at each other's clothes. For the white buttons on that shirt he was wearing to be torn from their threads and fall to the ground like ten tiny hail stones. For him to press me against the wall and make love to me. To wake up in the morning, still sweaty from a night of passion and just share things we've never dreamed to share about one another.

Rationality. Where had it gone?

His finger dropped. The gaze broke.

He pushed the key into the lock and we entered the apartment. My heart was still pounded in my ears as I sat at a dining room chair.

He looked in the freezer for ice. I could feel a blush rising on my cheeks. Should I feel so... hurt? Ashamed? Jilted? Annoyed? After all, we were platonic.

Just partners.

I shook my head almost imperceptibly as he came into the dining room and sat on a chair near me, pressing an ice pack to the swollen pink spot on my head. I lifted my hand and covered his.

"Bones, I--"

"What about you?"

"Huh?"

"You need ice, too."

He smiled and lowered his hand. "There was just the one."

"We can share."

Dubiousness traced his features as he thought it through. What happened to tonight? Was he starting to distrust his advances? Rethink the date?

I tugged on his tie and pulled him close until his head rested against the ice pack, his lips so close to mine that it was killing me. And I was hoping that it was killing him, too.

_Kiss me._

_Kiss me._

Irrational thoughts. Thank G-d nobody can hear them.

I sighed, my eyes slipping to his top button. A few stray chest hairs curled from beneath the opening and I longed to thread my fingers through--

_J-sus, Brennan. Get a hold of yourself!_

Eyes traveled northward. Past soft lips and settling on chestnut brown eyes.

Eyes that slowly closed.

His lips closed a painful distance at an unbearably slow speed.

Dizzying passion, his tongue softly running along my own. His hands ran northward along my thighs. He grasped my butt and pulled my legs over him, the chair screeched across the floor. His fingers searched beneath my panties and brushed my clitoris.

He quickly pulled back, breathing heavily.

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Bones. This isn't right."

I didn't reply, but perhaps that was prompt enough for him.

"We shouldn't--"

"If you're worried about Cullen--"

"It's not Cullen. Bones this isn't just... It's not just sex with me."

Of course it wasn't. I knew that, but I would have never admitted to it. I kept my mouth shut.

"I need to know that if we do this, you can return my feelings."

Tense seconds passed.

Too many seconds.

He stood. I stood.

Minutes later, I was letting a cool shower freeze away whatever torment was unfurling in my head.

-----------------------

_Sorry for the delay. I haven't had much time to write this week. My mom was hospitalized. She's out now, but I'll be looking after her this week. Hopefully there won't be a big delay between now and the next chapter. _


	12. Knowing

**Between Sleep and Awake**

**Part XII: Knowing  
**

The cool water ran over my shoulders. My hair hung like curtains around my ears. I swooshed it back and turned off the water. My feet hit the tile. Cold tile. Not bloody. Not twisting into a forest floor.

This time a white light began to drown out my view of the bedroom.

My other eyelid was gently pried open. The pen light illuminated my iris.

The doctor, gray-haired and slightly overweight stood back and marked on the chart the results of whatever test he had just performed.

He looked up and smiled, "So we're awake now?"

"Obviously." My groggy voice was more garbled than I had imagined.

He chuckled. He looked and sounded like a off-season Santa Claus. "I was warned that you're a fiery little thing."

"What test did you just perform?"

"Just checking your reaction time. How are you feeling?"

"I hurt. How would you feel?"

"I'd probably be hurting, too."

"Then why'd you ask?"

Another chuckle as he checked the chart, flipping white sheets of paper as he went. "Fever's down. 99.7. That's good."

"Did I need stitches?"

"Six of 'em." He leaned forward and pried back the medical tape. I sucked air through my teeth sharply. "It's looking good."

"I want to see my chart."

He looked at me with a measuring glance. "You're not one for beating around the bush, are you?"

"No."

He handed the chart over. Three broken ribs. Six stitches. "Did they do a rape kit?" I looked up at him.

"I can give you that paperwork if you want."

"I _do _want it."

Somebody knocked lightly on the door and opened it. A familiar face. Not the one I had wanted to see, but good enough.

"Hey, Tempe." Russ came in and took a seat.

"I'll just give you a few minutes," the doctor turned and began to walk out.

"One second. Can you give me any information on the condition of Special Agent Booth?"

"Doctor-Pat--"

"Patient confidentiality. I know."

He nodded and disappeared behind the door.

"Look what I got for you," Russ grinned and held up a little poinsettia in a red plastic pot.

"It's beautiful. Thanks, Russ."

He set it on the bedside table and turned to me. "How are ya?"

"Tired, groggy, anxious, hungry and sore."

He laughed. "Same old Tempe. Pulling out the thesaurus to answer a simple question."

I smiled. "Hey, Russ... Have you heard anything about Booth?"

He shrugged.

"Before I passed out last, Angela said that they took him off something. Do you know what?"

"Beats me. I guess that the person you need to talk to is Angela."

"That would be great!"

"What? Are you volunteering me?"

"Yes."

He sighed, "Fine. Where do you think your artist friend is? I don't suppose they have a Saks on the Pediatric Wing, do they?"

"They must have a gift shop. It is, after all, a hospital."

"Fine, Tempe. I'll go. And it's only because I love you so much."

He stood and went for the door.

"Wait, Russ."

He turned, "What? You want something from Saks, too?"

I just smiled, "I--I love you... Russ."

"J-sus, Tempe. You're gonna make me tear up." He went out the door. Then his head reappeared. "I love you, too, Tempe." Then the door closed behind him.

"That should keep him busy." I reached over and pulled out the IV from my right hand. "Yow," I winced.

My feet hit cold tile for the second time in five minutes' time. My weight rested on wobbly and uneasy legs.

Slowly, and painfully, might I add, I made it outside of the door.

With one hand on the wall I walked down the hall. A nurse or two gave me a questioning look here or there, but I confidently smiled at them and mumbled an excuse.

An elevator ride later, I found myself on the Intensive Care Ward. The last place I saw him. And, although I didn't wish that he was still there, I wished that he was. I couldn't wait another minute without knowing.

Had they taken him off the floor?

Had they taken him off oxygen?

Off pain killers?

Off fluids?

Off tube feeding?

Off life support?

Was the toe-tag comment just an evil joke spoken by a con-man and a killer?

As I limped along, pain shooting around my fractured ribs, a nurse buzzed past me.

"Excuse me," she muttered.

A second later, a police officer in dress-blues jogged past, gripping his weapon with his right hand.

"Hold him steady!" The nurse yelled.

"How'd he get out of the cuffs?"

"How the hell should I know? You're the cop!"

I reached the door and looked in. A man was jerking around in his bed, teeth gritted. Green eyes squinting with anger. Blond hair slick with sweat. "I'm innocent! I'm an FBI Agent! I was framed!"

"Yeah, yeah. Tell that to the woman who you beat all t'hell." The officer, a tall African-American man, snapped a double set of cuffs on Prideaux and smiled a wide grin. "You're gonna be here for a while, brother."

I kept walking. I had a mission. Despite my curiosity about Prideaux's situation, I wanted to find Booth.

Booth.

What would I do if he _was _in the morgue? I owed him my life and in return, I... I was silent.

"Not any more." My hand slid along the wall.

"Dr. Brennan!"

I turned and looked back toward the elevator. A flustered nurse was running toward me.

"Stop! You're not well yet!"

I started sliding my hand faster. Quicker.

"Agent Booth!"

I turned the corner, my eyebrows pressing together. Did someone just say Booth's name?

And there he was.

Sliding his hand along the wall. One hand keeping him from toppling over. The other hand holding the back of his hospital gown together.

"Agent Booth! You're not ready yet!"

"Dr. Brennan, please!"

Both nurses stopped once the nurse who was pursuing me turned the corner.

But that was all that I noticed. Most of that came from what people told me.

"Bones," Booth said. He shook his head slowly and chuckled. "You should be in bed."

I scooted toward him, going a speed that could only be congruent to that of a tortoise.

"You should talk." I looked him up and down.

"You're as stubborn as a mule. You know that, Bones?" He smiled flirtatiously as he walked toward me.

"You're tenacious and self-destructive. And yes, I do know that I'm stubborn." By then, we were standing toe-to-toe. "I think it's one of my best attributes."

He smiled and ran his knuckles along my face, then cradled it tenderly between both of his hands. The nurse that stood behind him got an eyeful. "I think so, too, Bones."

"Why'd you come here?"

"Same reason as you. I had to know. It was killing me not knowing." He kissed the bandage on my face. The tenderness in his features became pained and sad. "I'm sorry that I couldn't be there for you."

"You were."

He rested his head against mine, "Do you know what I dreamed about while they had me doped up?" He smiled, "You." A second passed before he spoke again. "I realized--I realized that life's too short to keep doing this to ourselves."

"Doing what?"

"Lying, Bones."

He must have seen the tear I felt building in my right eye. "It's OK, Bones. You don't have to be strong in front of me."

The tear slipped down my cheek and soaked into hospital gown.

He reached up and wiped the tear away.

"I... I killed a man."

"You've killed before."

"I've shot people. But this--"

The nail plunged into his neck, snapping like a thousand interwoven rubberbands beneath the force of my fist.

"It was terrible, Booth."

"You did what you had to do."

"I couldn't be another victim. I've seen what people do to each other. I've seen the worst of it. I... I fought. I fought for my life." His thumb continued to stroke my face, then it slipped around behind my neck.

"I'm glad you did. The truth is, I can't live without you."

I laughed, "Then we're in the wrong business, Booth."

He kissed my cheek, taking my breath away once lips lips brushed my skin. A fire spread in the spot where he kissed me.

"Booth."

"Yeah?" Breathlessly.

"I think I can return your feelings."

"Right now, I'm just glad that we get a second shot."

His lips met mine. I wrapped an arm around his waist. Reaching up was too painful. He pulled me closer, deeper. My head spun, and for the first time in days, it wasn't a bad thing. It could have been a side-effect of the pain medication, but I secretly like to think it was something else. Something indescribably wonderful. The kiss was sweet and passionate. Hot and delicate. It ripped me from the demons that held me to earth and pulled me into a different world. A world that I could only wish to stay in forever.

And for once, I couldn't wait to see what tomorrow would bring.

-----------------------

_This story is Fin. Thank you for your replies!!! :D  
_


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